While the internet is nothing like it used to be, social media platforms have become the hot debating ground for people to have sensible conversations about whatever topic that makes sense to them which was the case of YouTube. And I said “Was” because that seems to be the olden YouTube and not the modern ad-ridden video sharing platform that many loved and built a career on.
But what am I say…YouTube is said to be determined to curb election misinformation once and for all and to fight this, it’s said to have started scrapping off videos that disputes the 2020 US presidential election result.
According to YouTube, states have already certified the results and so starting from Dec. 9th onward, any video that it deems to be spreading any form of electoral misinformation will be removed or have started to be removed.
So Joe Biden is the President-elect and anybody that publishes content that opposes this will be terminated not exactly in those terms but something like that.
YouTube is said to be matching this by updating its election fact check panels with a link to the Office of the Federal Register page which confirms Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election and so there will be link to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s page which debunks false election integrity claims.
According to Engadget, the media outlet said the video sharing giant had contacted them and stated it would rely on its information panels in order to challenge claims in content that claims widespread fraud in the previous US presidential elections and allowed “controversial views” on vote counting while the tallies were still in progress.
YouTube also said that its anti-misinformation effort during the election had been effective and was able to ban over 8,000 channels and “thousands” of videos for “harmful and misleading” claims since September and hinted that 77% of these deleted videos never had 100 views before being pulled.
Fact check panels have activated over 200,000 times since the November 3rd election, YouTube added.
This is why the Republicans and those who support Donald Trump call the so-called “mainstream media” as being biased and untrustworthy.
But one question I have to ask is if Donald Trump had won the election, will YouTube implement the same measures to silence those who dispute the credibility of the election on the platform from the Democrat and Biden’s supporters point of view? We’ll probably have to wait until the year 2024 to determine that.
